Publish 2013 Census Data, EU Urges Bosnia

Officials in Brussels have urged the Bosnian government to publish the full results of the 2013 census after suggestions that the country could soon submit an application to join the EU.

Rodolfo Toe

BIRN

Sarajevo

The headquarters of the European Commission | Photo: Flickr

EU officials have told Bosnia and Herzegovina that it urgently needs to publish the final results of the census it conducted in 2013, after claims by local politicians that Sarajevo could soon apply for membership.

“The European Commission attaches crucial importance to the census not only because of its relevance in the context of the EU integration process but also as an instrument to perform economic and social planning,” European Commission spokesperson Maja Kocijancic told BIRN.

“The Commission deeply regrets that the final results of the census have not yet been disseminated and urges [Bosnia and Herzegovina] to complete this statistical operation with no further delay,” Kocijancic said.

In recent weeks, several prominent Bosnian politicians have claimed that the country’s Council of Ministers will deliver its application for EU membership soon.

The ethnic sensitivity of the headcount has led to an impasse meaning that so far the authorities have only been able to share some preliminary results showing the geographical distribution of the population.

Mirsada Adembegovic, the spokesperson of the Agency for Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, told BIRN that progress was expected soon, allowing the full data to be published.

“A new session of the commission which is in charge of the publication of the result of the census will be organised at the end of January and we expect that the problems concerning the methodology will be resolved,” Adembegovic said.

“The law on the census clearly says that the final date for the publication of the results of the census is July 1, 2016,” she added.

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